


Dumped

by ScripStrel



Category: Be More Chill - Iconis/Tracz
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - No Squip, But Mostly Because of the AU, Character Death, Co-workers, Fish, Gen, Murder, No Romance, Ocean, Out of Character, sorry - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-26
Updated: 2018-12-26
Packaged: 2019-09-27 20:01:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17168444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScripStrel/pseuds/ScripStrel
Summary: On the morning of his murder, Jeremy woke up from another dream about her... Her voice, same as always, swirling around him like mist and pulling him down,down,down.A complete AU featuring a ton of fish and a dash of angsty plot.





	Dumped

On the morning of his murder, Jeremy woke up from another dream about her. It was deceptively simple, but it made no sense. The only thing he remembered was her voice, same as always, swirling around him like mist and pulling him down, down, down. Weird. Just like any other dream, really.

He was still out of breath, though.

He shivered, untangling himself from his bedsheets. The rug swayed under his feet as he stood and stretched. He glanced at the clock and groaned. Already behind. So much for trying to impress his new boss. He’d be lucky to not be fired before the end of his first year. Well, lucky if he didn’t work at the shipyard.

It was hard to fire people from a shipyard. Heck, it was hard to hire people to a shipyard. They took any hands they could get.

The January drizzle dotted on his shoulders and left crystalline drops in his hair. With a cold wind smelling of fish and brine in his lungs and a mystifying song still swirling in his head, Jeremy trotted down the dock.

"Mr. Heere!” a gravelly voice called. “Glad you could finally make it!”

“Hey, Reyes. Sorry.” Old Reyes leered back at Jeremy with a glass eye and golden teeth.

“Sorry don’t unload no crates, son,” he said, the salt of the sea clear in his voice. “Get to it.”

“Yessir,” Jeremy muttered, the worn wood creaking under his boots as he trudged off to the beach house. Beach house was a euphemism. At best, the tiny shack could be described as an outhouse, but it stored what they needed, along with several piles of rancid fish.

There was a reason it was hard to hire people to a shipyard.

Michael was lounging on a crate untangling a net when Jeremy pushed open the beach house door. “You’re late,” he said.

“Thanks, I hadn’t noticed.” Jeremy blew out hard through his nose, trying in vain to get used to the scent of ocean rot.

Mike chuckled. “Bet good Old Reyes noticed.”

Jeremy hung his coat on a hook on the wall. It was just as cold in the beach house as out, but he wasn’t about to let _all_ of his clothes get ruined. “He always does.”

Michael tossed the net aside and shoved his cracked, bent-up glasses up his nose. “Best be careful, Jer. You don’t wanna be enemies with Reyes, especially not when you’ve just been hired. I told you about what happened to that first poor sucker who got on his bad side, right?”

“Several times.”

Completely ignoring him, Michael went on. “I mean, he already hated Chris. Said this line of work wasn’t meant for women, which is fair. It’s pretty nasty. Not much of a job for men, either.” He shrugged and hooked his thumbs into his pockets. “But she was the Captain’s kid and Old Reyes would listen to the Captain, at least. I’ll give him that.”

Jeremy went and shoved Mike off of his perch and inspected the crate. It was a big one. “Did he tell you what we do with the shipment?”

“Ah, just dump it. It doesn’t matter.” Mike waved him off, slumping against the wall.

Jeremy shot him a look. “So I take it he didn’t.”

“You know, sometimes I forget what’s like being the newbie. I almost feel bad.” Michael stared off into the distance, eyes fogging over behind the glare on his lenses. Jeremy ignored him.

The crate was just like all the others. Splintering two-by-fours nailed together with all the precision of a half-finished Jenga game. No real labels, just the occasional sharpie scribble that was probably supposed to mean something, but Jeremy had always sucked at shorthand. “I’ll humor you,” he said. “Where are we dumping it?”

Michael hummed, lost in his own little world. “Yeah, dumping is the right word, I’d say. No mess that way.”

Jeremy rolled his eyes, getting up to search for a crowbar. If Mike wouldn’t do his job, Jeremy would just do it for him.

“I still say he dumped her. The other guys say that’s crazy talk, but I know.” Michael’s voice was distant, like it was coming through a fog. Jeremy paused in his half-shuffled pile of netting and boards and rope and bars.

“You never told me that part.”

“Never really told anyone, but I was watching that night.”

“Hold on.” Jeremy whirled around. “You told me that Chris just didn’t show up one day and that Reyes said he’d had a talk with her and sacked her. Like a bag of fish, you said.”

Michael’s eyes finally drifted from the wood paneled wall to meet Jeremy’s gaze. “And what do we do with _fish_ around here?” He took off his glasses and started wiping them on a filthy rag pulled from his pocket. “They went off on a boat at like, midnight, and he came back alone.”

_What we do with fish around here._ Jeremy shot a look to the crate. Fish. Bad fish unloaded from bad catches. Going back to the ocean to decompose somewhere out of the way.

They never did let him see inside.

“Mike. I need you to be straight with me, here.”

Michael didn’t meet his eyes, intent on his glasses, but his voice was steady when he said, “Shoot.”

“What’s in the crates?”

“Fish,” he said, breathing hot air on the glass and wiping it again.

Jeremy swallowed. “What kind of—”

A loud knock rattled the beach house. “Boys!” Old Reyes’s voice croaked. “It’s dumping time!”

* * *

A steady trickle of water seeped down Jeremy’s shirt, splashed continuously over the side of the tiny rowboat. His arms ached and his lungs burned. The combined weight of himself, Michael, and the crate rocked to and fro in the choppy waves. The wind howled, a strange melody floating amidst the maelstrom. It fogged Jeremy’s mind and pierced into his chest. He pushed against the water.

“I don’t know why you’re so nervous,” Jeremy gasped between strokes as his scrawny arms protested the decision to have him row. “I’m the one who’s never done this before.”

Mike drummed his fingers on the side of the boat, glancing around constantly, like he expected someone to be following them. He barked out a laugh that was whisked away by the frigid wind and ran a hand through his hair, stopping to rub the back of his neck. “I’m nervous for you, Jer. It’s not every day you get caught up in a dumping.”

Jeremy shrugged to the best of his ability, fingers numb with cold and exhaustion as that song wove deeper into his head. “How hard can it be? You just pop the top of the crate and empty it in, right?”

Michael stared at him. “Yeah, something like that.”

After what felt like hours of rowing, when the sun was starting to spear through the thinning clouds and dip behind the horizon, painting the steely water with rust, Michael spoke again. “Here’s good.”

Jeremy stretched out his shoulders, but froze when he heard a crescendo. It had been humming incessantly all day, but now it was starting to get on his nerves. “Can you hear that?”

Mike glanced up warily from where he was crouched near the crate, crowbar in hand. “Hear what, man?”

“That song.” Jeremy knew he was probably crazy. It had just been stuck in his head all day because of his dream. Still, the voice was so soft, so welcoming. He had to know if it was more than a figment of his imagination.

“Are you going mad on me?” Michael asked, leaning on the crowbar. “Talking crap about sirens or something?”

Jeremy gave a breathy laugh and shook his head. “No. I’m fine.” He waved at the cracked crate. “How does this work?”

“Well.” Mike heaved down on the crowbar, bursting the crate open. The smell of rot spilled out full force and hit Jeremy square in the nose. “We dump.” He leaned down, forcing the crate up to tip towards the side of the boat. The dingy pitched sideways. “Help me out, here. It’s heavy.”

Jeremy scrambled to the other side of the box, helping to hoist it without jettisoning it into the sea. Amidst the mass of gray slime and blackening scales, that poured out, he could’ve sworn he saw a flash of iridescent green, as well as a mop of long hair, and, most horrifyingly, a _hand._

He stood to look into the blood red water, but Poseidon was a very efficient bus boy, and no evidence was left except a swirling mass of bubbles.

Before Jeremy could vocalize his shock and confusion, Mike spoke. “I always hate this part,” he said. Jeremy turned from the crimson waves. Michael stared back at him, biting his lip and furrowing his brow. “It was the Captain’s idea years ago. He made Reyes keep it up. He loved them, the Captain. Loved them so much he would—and could—go out and talk to them. Can you imagine that?”

“I—I don’t—”

“Chris knew, of course, the Captain being her old man and all. Old Reyes didn’t know she knew, so when she saw one, he did what he thought he had to.” Michael was gripping the crow bar with white knuckles, staring past Jeremy now.

“This doesn’t make any sense,” Jeremy said.

“And when the Captain found out what happened, he flipped. Went back home to his wife and hasn’t been seen since.”

“Michael!” Jeremy finally choked out. “Was that a—”

Mike sighed. “Yeah. Captain knew they got washed up and caught and stuff, and he didn’t want people knowing. You know, because he loved them.”

Jeremy couldn’t seem to pick his jaw up off the bottom of the boat. “We just dumped a—”

“It was dead already, and this way they can bury it right. However they do it.” Michael’s voice cracked as he spoke, tears starting to streak down his cheeks, mixing with the sea spray.

Jeremy stole a glance back to the water. Scarlet was fading back to iron as dusk set in. That strange song still burned red in his mind, like the image of that hand.

“Rich and Jake heard singing too, right around when they found out,” Michael said. Jeremy whipped his head around. Mike was truly crying now. “Jake knew Chris, and he said it sounded like her.”

Jeremy’s heart dropped into his stomach. “Why haven’t I heard of them before?”

“I, uh…” Mike averted his eyes, taking off his glasses and fiddling with the wire frames as he wiped at his eyes. “You’ve gotta understand that Reyes made me. I’ve been best friends with Chris since we were tiny, so I’d always known about them too. So, well… It was only natural for me to… uh…” He cleared his throat. “Do the dumping.”

Jeremy fumbled for words. Michael was really, really crying now. The crowbar was abandoned at his feet as he crushed his glasses in his hand and created a brand new ocean in their tiny boat.

“I’m sorry,” Michael choked out. “I really, really liked you. I thought I could—” He shook his head. “But no one can know.”

Jeremy stared at him, watching his tears spill and his chest heave. Mike stumbled to his feet, crowbar held loosely in his trembling hand.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

The siren song was deafening now. Michael stumbled towards him. Jeremy stood, swaying with the chopping waves.

He didn’t even realize he’d been hit until icy water was closing over his head. Water roared in his ears and into his lungs, freezing him inside out. His head filled with sea and song. Blinking open, vision watery, he could nearly see her face. Wavering, smiling, singing.

Chris. Christine.

Her hair billowed around her face, soft and round and smiling sadly. Her eyes were pearls and her voice was like the bleeding light of sunset, whisking Jeremy into the sea with her song and her secret.

**Author's Note:**

> This completely lacks any romance or canon ties or anything like my usual fics because I got the starter sentence and ran with it to make an actually original thing for once, but then liked it enough to go back and change names and post it.
> 
> I wrote this while on an airplane for five hours, in case anyone cared to know.
> 
> As always, I adore feedback, so please let me know what you thought.  
> Hope you enjoyed, and Happy Holidays!


End file.
